


When the Crickets Have Arthritis (Logince)

by mt_reade



Series: Sanders Sides Short Stories! [11]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angels, Angst, But I'm really proud of this so I hope you'll read this anyway, Caring Logic | Logan Sanders, Cause Roman is a kiddo, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders Angst, Illnesses, Optimism, Other, Roommates, Sharing a Room, Terminal Illnesses, This isn't romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:14:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24277228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mt_reade/pseuds/mt_reade
Summary: "You know what the worst part about being sick is?""What?""They give you all the ice cream you want."---Please read the notes for trigger warnings :)Also! This story is not even a little romantic because Roman is a kiddo :)
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Series: Sanders Sides Short Stories! [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1721833
Comments: 24
Kudos: 72





	When the Crickets Have Arthritis (Logince)

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNNGS: Angst, mild cursing, ambiguous ending, implied possible character death, cancer, hospitals, mentions of death/"Death", mentions of "God" (not a specific one it's just brought up), mentions of "the Devil," sickness. 
> 
> This story is nspired by one of my most favourite poems by Shane Koyczan called "The Crickets Have Arthritis"
> 
> Please note that this story is not even a little romantic because Roman is a kiddo :)

It didn't matter why Logan was there.

It didn't matter why he was there, where the air was sterile, and the sheets stung with their rough scratchiness along the edges. It didn't matter that he was hooked up to this machine that looked like a wall that beeped and buzzed with every leap of his heart. It didn't matter that he was curled up like a fist that protested death, and it didn't matter that every breath was at the expense of hard labour. It didn't matter that he was both too hot and absolutely freezing all at once. It didn't matter that Logan felt like he was being served to Death on a silver platter.

It didn't matter, because his hospital roommate was wearing Star Wars pyjamas.

He was nine years old, and his name was Roman.

Logan didn't have to ask what Roman was here for. The wig that he wore over a small smooth head, and the frame of pasty skin on brittle bones spoke volumes. Roman had held a Game Boy in his hand when Logan had first been admitted into this room. The extensive set up of toys, portable video games, and a special feather pillow that bloomed around his head showed all of the effort and ends that everyone had gone to in order to ensure that Roman felt at home. As he was going to be there awhile.

When he first met Roman, Logan had managed a smile. It had felt like the biggest lie that Logan had ever told. He had held his breath, waiting for the moment that Roman was going to call him out on it. He held his breath, because, in that moment he had been terrified of a nine-year-old boy who was permanently hooked to a machine, because he was watching him. Roman had watched Logan with a simple curiosity that made Logan squirm like the boy was delving into his very soul. So, Logan held his breath, and looked away.

But, over the next few days, Logan's fear subsided. This was because he realized something about Roman: he was all about show and tell. Every chance he had, Roman pulled out a random little throwaway object from one of many boxes that held his life's collection. The objects always seemed so insignificant, but Roman was always able to put each one in context, with specifics in a story so precise it was as if he'd told each one hundreds of times before. Perhaps he had.

"This is from the playground behind my old house. It had the longest and funnest slide you've ever seen in your life!"

"This is from a weird boy. He gave it to me for Christmas two years ago. He said he drew it himself."

Logan spent his days in the hospital watching Roman wrap his delicate and dreadfully young hands around cufflinks and bottle caps like they were geodes that were just waiting to be cracked open. Throughout the few weeks that Logan knew him, he'd learned that to Roman, every knick-knack was a treasure, and every treasure had a story.

Every time that Logan had thought that Roman must have exhausted his catalogue of stories, the young boy hit him with another riveting tale from his bound book of adventures.

"See, Logan? This one is from my father, his name is Patton. That's my middle name, you know!"

"This is from my best friend. We made it together at his house when we were tiny."

"Oh, this is from that weird boy again."

It had taken Logan two days to figure out that " _that weird boy_ " was Roman's twin brother.

And, it took Roman about two hours after his family left that evening to figure out that he missed him.

The brother, along with his father, came to visit Roman every day. They always stayed long past visiting hours because to them, that term didn't apply. They spent hours at his side. Remus and Roman would draw together, and Patton would sometimes lead them in a game of "I Spy." But, of course, the two of them always eventually had to leave. When they did, it left Roman and Logan alone in the dark.

One such night, Logan had his head back on his pillow, staring upwards at a roof that he couldn't see through the blackness, but he knew it was there. He knew it was there with the same certainty that he knew Roman was lying in silence somewhere beside him, in his own bed. Logan couldn't be sure if the boy was asleep or not, but the sound of his shallow breath was a comfort and a constant. It was reassuring, somehow, to know that with each other, they weren't alone.

But, Roman wasn't asleep, and in the sanctity of the vulnerable yet shielding darkness, he spoke.

"You know what the worst part about being sick is?"

Logan rolled his head to the side, staring into the void in his vision where he knew Roman must be. "What?" His voice was quiet and stealthy, like he was trying to avoid being blown up in a field of landmines that beeped like the tolling heart monitor at his bedside.

"They give you all the free ice cream you want."

"Why's that so bad?"

"Because they do it 'cause they know that there's nothing else they can do for you." Roman's words were fragile, like rain on a cracked windowsill. Like a seashell being carried out by the tide. "Ice cream is really good, but it can't make everything okay."

Then Logan laid there for a moment. There was no easy way to ask this, and Logan knew what Roman was going to say, but maybe he just needed to say it. So, Logan asked anyway.

"Are you scared?"

Roman didn't even lower his voice when he said: "Fuck yeah."

Logan listened to a nine-year-old boy say the word " _fuck_ ," and it caught him off guard. But perhaps it shouldn't have. Because in hindsight, it was like Roman had the right to a word like that. Because the hand he had been dealt had no chance of winning, and if he needed a curse word to help him through it then, honestly? Logan wanted to teach him to swear like the devil himself was watching them, taking notes at the foot of their white beds with a pad and a pen. But, before Logan could forget that Roman was only nine, the boy spoke up again, voice meeker and more hurried this time.

"Please don't tell my dad I said that."

Logan quickly promised that he wouldn't, and the two fell into silence once more. The hospital walls were buzzing with the electric energy of secrets being ripped from the chests of patients. Patients who were watching the sky bend above them before it snapped, because the heavens would rush down to greet them then, and they weren't sure how much longer their arms could hold up the weight of the sky. The time ticked away on a clock that neither of them could see, but they could hear. It was like a countdown. To what exactly, they weren't sure, but in the meantime, Roman had more questions to ask.

"Logan?"

"Yes?"

"Do you believe in angels?"

Just before Logan realized that he didn't have the heart to tell him, he breathed out the words, "Not lately."

When they were out in the air, Logan just laid there in silence, waiting for Roman to hate him.

But, of course, Roman didn't. It was as if he didn't know how to. Roman loved the same way as a boy from a time before humans figured out what hatred was.

\--

Roman never greeted Logan with silence, only smiles. He smiled in a way that was slow and gentle, with a patience that Logan had never seen in someone who knew that they were dying. Logan bit his tongue in the days that followed, doing all he could to not remind Roman that he himself would be out of here in just under a week, wandering the streets with a to-go coffee in hand, able to take his life for granted. All the while Roman would still be stuck here, planted in his hospital bed like a flower that just refused to grow. Like a storyteller pinned to his desk by ideas that were too otherworldly and fantastic to be brought to earth, so they had to bring the storyteller up to the stars instead.

One of Roman's favourite pastimes was to pluck a single feather from his downy pillow, and drop it over the side of his bed. He would watch it with eyes wide in awe as it floated to the ground. He watched them with the eyes of the philosopher, the _dreamer,_ inside of Sir Isaac Newton when he'd proclaimed that it was gravity that had been getting us down.

But science was about truth.

And the truth was, there just weren't enough miracles to go around.

Because for every answered prayer, there was a cricket with arthritis. When Logan and Roman spent those few precious days in that room together, the crickets around them had arthritis, so there was no music. There was no crescendo of the swelling symphony of nature and hope and second chances. There was no thundering rhythm except the beat held by the hearts in their chests. In those precious few days, Logan watched Roman meet silence with pounding fists. He watched him meet the silence of his lucky crickets with the same level of noise that a father whose nine-year-old son is dying makes when he tries to bargain with the heavens.

On the day Logan had to leave, he promised that he'd never forget Roman. It was something that seemed offhand when he said it, as he knelt by the boy's bedside for their final goodbye. But, it held gravity in his heart like it was tugging a feather to the floor. A feather that cascaded through him, down through his core as he stared into the face of bravery.

There were over seven billion people in the world, curled up like fists that protested death. But, every breath taken had to be given back, one way or another.

So, Logan held his breath.

He held it the same way he would a pen as he wrote thank-you letters on his skin to all of the trees that gave him that breath to hold.

Logan held his breath as he took the hand of a young boy who faced the world every day knowing he was facing a battle that he wasn't likely to win. He'd brought a knife to this gun fight, but instead of backing down he said " _bring it._ " Because he'd had practice, and was going to fight with everything he had, even if what he had wasn't enough. Logan held his breath as he looked into the eyes of a boy who kept fighting, so that even if God's hands didn't catch him, it wasn't because he hadn't tried.

Logan watched as Roman offered him his ever patient smile, the one that glowed with the shooting stars that fell from the sky and held all the wishes he'd never get to make. He watched as Roman twisted in his bed to pull a single white feather from his pillow, and instead of letting it fall to the floor, he held it fast.

Now, Logan didn't often believe in angels. But, when Roman held out the feather towards him, with a whisper of: "This is for you..."

Logan had half expected Roman to say, "You know, this is the first one I grew."


End file.
